


The Realm of Believability

by cloudcraft



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Canon Universe, Gen, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Game(s), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-15 01:18:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16052468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudcraft/pseuds/cloudcraft
Summary: [MAJOR V3 ENDGAME SPOILERS - ACTUAL SUMMARY IN BEGINNING NOTES]Shuichi spent his life trying not to be crushed under the weight of everyone else's hopes and expectations. Nowadays, that weight felt as light as a feather.Set post-game. Implied Oumasai.





	The Realm of Believability

**Author's Note:**

> Summary: After emerging from the killing game into the real world, Shuichi has more difficulties adjusting to life than he thought, and finds solace in an unlikely place. 
> 
> Notes: I played the game in Japanese, so there may be some discrepancies between my wording and the official localization. Apologies in advance.

The international cyber crimes unit awkwardly resembled of some of the rooms back at Saishu Academy. There was something about the juxtaposition of computer screens with greenery, and the slightly too-bright overhead lights. When he walked into the head detective’s office, the sight of a little astronaut paperweight sitting on the detective's desk made Shuichi's stomach turn. He fought to ignore it during the testimony session, but whenever he couldn’t stand facing the detective’s pitying frown a second longer, his eyes inevitably drifted back to the astronaut’s glossy black helmet.

He wondered how many times the video camera caught him glancing down at it as he detailed another grisly murder. From its vantage point behind the detective’s desk, it probably caught everything. Once they were finished, the detective shut his case file but left the camera rolling.

"Sorry we have to keep calling you in, Saihara. Between all the survivors, you had the most contact with both the victims and project organizers," he said.

"It's fine," Shuichi said, meeting the detective's eyes again. "I understand that you need as much testimony on record as possible." 

The detective offered a sad half smile. 

"Right. Well, that's it for today, so you're free to go." 

Two hours maximum testimonial recording at a time was standard, to avoid mental strain on the witness. Especially victims of trauma. Plus, they could only fit in so much time after Shuichi got out of school, and before the detectives ought to go home to their spouses and children. Shuichi had nowhere so pressing to be, but he imagined he ought to head back to his new dorm and start his homework. 

Instead of doing that, he adjusted his posture and asked,

"How is the investigation going?" 

The detective hesitated a moment. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. 

"As you know, it's not an active investigation so much as ongoing monitoring. While there have been deaths associated with Project Dangan Ronpa, due to the contracts and waivers that they had you fill out in advance, they're treated as assisted suicides in the eyes of the law. Which is legal in the country where the Project is based."

"I thought that I explained in our last session that Shirogane Tsumugi erased our memories of signing those contracts. We weren't capable of revoking the terms after the fact." 

"That's just the thing—the memory manipulation clause is worked into the contract too," the detective explained, patient and slow. "It's my understanding that you all signed it—" 

Trained to never miss a rhetorical opening, Shuichi’s voice broke free from his throat before he could think better of it.

"How could such a one-sided contract be legal in any country? And for that sake, how do high schoolers have the legal standing to sign them?" 

The detective said nothing for a long moment, then sighed and leaned forward again. 

"I understand you're frustrated. That's why we're here, to keep a full account of the Dangan Ronpa killing games in the event that we find a way to prosecute." His eyes and voice softened, too quickly to be sincere. "Hey, thanks to you, this last one may turn out to be the last of them all. You're allowed to be proud of yourself, kid." 

"That's not—" Shuichi stammered, then said more firmly: "Being proud has nothing to do with it, I just did it for my friends." 

For his friends, and for all the other students he'd never know, who were murdered under close surveillance by the task force. 

"Yeah," the detective said, the faint warmth in his expression dying down again. "You can tell me more about it during our next session." 

The detective began to push himself out of his seat, reaching back to switch off the camera. Shuichi glanced down at the paperweight, then up again. 

"I'd like to join the investigation team. Would that be possible?" 

The detective’s hands stopped short of the camera controls. Gripping the armrests, he slowly resettled himself in his seat and folded his hands in his lap to face Shuichi again. 

“Saihara, I’m going to be honest with you because I think you’re mature enough to handle it.”

His tone sounded practiced. Based on the photo of the detective’s children on his desk, Saihara assumed that it was.

"You joining the task force would be difficult for a few reasons. For one, having a witness and victim take part in the task force would be a fairly glaring conflict of interest. And due to the unusual circumstances surrounding your memory, we can't be certain of how much control Shirogane's team still has over you."

A protest bubbled up from Shuichi's throat, but the detective silenced it with a hand placed firmly on the table between them, looking Shuichi in the eye. 

“Like I said before, what we do is more ‘ongoing monitoring.’ Not an investigation. Frankly, there’s not enough work to go around that we need the extra hands.”

Thirteen students murdered, culprits still at large, and there wasn’t enough work to do? 

"But even if we could prove your credibility and give you a job to do, you've got more important things to focus on now. You're not a 'super high school level detective' anymore—you never were. You're just a normal high school kid. And I bet you've got some catching up to do in your classes." 

Shuichi didn't know how to explain that he really didn't have any catching up to do, that all the answers to the test questions were just floating around in his head as if he really had been a brainiac prodigy detective since he was a kid. How was he supposed to explain that just being in a classroom sometimes made his skin crawl, unable to shake the feeling that he was still reflected in hundreds of tiny video camera screens?

Was that really the important thing that he should be focusing on?

"How about we call it a day, Saihara? I'll walk you to the entrance." 

Without meeting the detective's eyes, Shuichi slowly lifted his gaze to the camera lens behind the detective's desk, still recording their whole conversation. 

He swallowed the lump in his throat and stood up.

  


* * *

  


The dorm rooms at his new school were about half the size of the rooms at Saishu Academy. Those massive rooms, like everything else in that facility, were too absurd to be true. 

Shuichi set his bag down and shrugged off his new uniform jacket, draping it over the back of his desk chair before flopping onto his bed. The well-worn mattress welcomed him with a squeak, letting him sink in deep. He closed his eyes into the plain grey sheets and took a deep breath. 

He had no right being so upset about the pseudo-investigation. Even if he wasn’t able to join the task force, he and the other students of the 53rd class had already done more than enough. They’d achieved the impossible—changed the hearts and minds of thousands—and managed to escape alive from that hell of a school. He’d done what he’d promised Akamatsu he would do... although many more had died along the way than she had hoped. 

Would she be proud of him? Even as he lay here, his mind churned with all the things he couldn’t do, and hadn’t been able to do. 

Someone coughed in the room next door. The walls were practically made of paper; Shuichi could even hear his neighbor typing sometimes. He buried his head deeper into the sheets.

The coughing got louder, more violent. Unbidden and unwanted, his mind provided vivid images of blood splattering on Momota’s palms and down his front.

God, was the rest of his life really going to be like this? It was bad enough that he could barely listen to piano music without feeling sick. He couldn’t trust his own mind the way he had before, with unfailing faith in his faculties of logic. 

Shuichi shifted to make himself more comfortable, willing his body to calm down, when a needling, nasal voice cut through his focus.

“Aww, Saihara’s ignoring me. I thought for sure that the cough would get your attention.” 

Shuichi cracked one eye open. 

Sure enough, there he was. Leaning against the desk, playing with the lapel of Shuichi’s jacket. He wore the white costume and checked scarf that Shirogane gave him, free of holes and as clean as the day they’d met. He regarded Shuichi with a relaxed smirk, no trace of the sunken eyed leer from when Shuichi had last seen him alive. 

“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,“ Ouma said. “How was your trip to the bureau? Did you talk about me today?” 

Whether or not he liked it, Shuichi had talked about Ouma in every single testimony session thus far. There was no way to talk about his time at Saishu Academy without mentioning Ouma Kokichi. Ouma had wormed his way into everything, from start to finish. Now he’d wormed his way into Shuichi’s room from beyond the grave.

Shuichi hauled himself back upright to face him. 

“Why do you keep showing up?” he asked. “I’ve already said that I have nothing to say to you.” 

“That might be what you want to think, but if your subconscious keeps projecting me here, then that must mean that you have some unfinished business with me, deep down inside.” 

Shuichi had little to say to that. Insofar as he could trust his own memory, this was the fifth time that Ouma had appeared to him. He’d given up on closing his eyes and waiting until Ouma went away. It never worked, and Ouma hated being ignored. Shuichi folded his legs and turned to face him.

“Let’s say that you’re right, and you’re here because I have unfinished business with Ouma Kokichi,” Shuichi began, speaking slowly and clearly. “If I already know that you’re a projection of my own imagination, then talking to you isn’t going to help me finish that business. I know that I’m only talking to myself, not the real Ouma.” 

Ouma’s smirk spread into a wicked grin and Shuichi realized he’d walked directly into one of Ouma’s traps.

“But that’s better than nothing, isn’t it? And what is the ‘real Ouma’ anyway? What makes your imagined version of me any less real than Shirogane’s?” 

If he’d needed any more evidence that this Ouma was a product of his mind, there was also this: Ouma knew everything that Shuichi knew about the final class trial and Shirogane Tsumugi. This made him particularly difficult to talk to... but also made him the only being in the world who understood the case the same way that Shuichi did.

Not that it mattered.

“I don’t have time to talk in circles today. If you don’t have anything else to say, I’m going to go to sleep.” 

"Don't be boring, Saihara. Let's play a game." 

"Or what, you'll kill me? That threat won't work anymore, now that you're not an independent existence."

"I'd gotten bored of that anyway," Ouma said, waving off the thought before putting on a wicked grin. "Instead, I could kill Harumaki. How does that sound?" 

Shuichi's mouth went dry. Ouma went on. 

"Sure, I might be a product of your subconscious, but if I can appear against your will then who knows what else I can do if I put my mind to it." Ouma giggled. "Or your mind, in this case." 

"... That's not funny. Even if you could, you wouldn't stand a chance against her, especially not in my body." 

"Who knows? Maybe she'd hesitate for a second because it's you. Maybe that's all I'd need... Or maybe you're not even worried about the possibility of me killing her, but of her finding out about me? About our secret heart-to-hearts?" 

Of course Ouma knew that he hadn't told Harukawa. Even if Ouma weren’t an extension of his own mind, he’d be able to guess as much. But rather than lording that fact over him, Ouma suddenly burst into tears.

"Saiharaaaa, you have no idea how lonely it was in those last hours—with only stupid Momota for company—and the poison slowly killing me..." He sniffed loudly, rubbing his arms for extra effect. "I missed you so much—so just—play a game with meeee—" 

" _Fine_." Shuichi grit his teeth. "Just leave Harukawa out of this." 

Shuichi pushed himself to the edge of the bed and glared at Ouma, whose tears had suddenly stopped and given way to a sunny smile. 

"I knew you wouldn't let me down, Saihara. So, what should we play first?"

  


* * *

  


Shuichi awoke to a sharp rapping on his dorm room door. He had a good idea of who it was, even without having to hear her voice. 

"Just a second!" he called, stumbling out of bed and hastily straightening his clothes. 

When he opened the door, Harukawa simply gave him a brief look-over and a frown. She was dressed in casual clothes, an outfit that Shuichi had never seen before. She seemed to default to black and dark red as a matter of course, but it suited her.

"Did you sleep in your uniform?" she asked.

"I don't remember falling asleep," Shuichi admitted with a sheepish laugh. That was true, at least. 

"Saihara," Yumeno greeted from Harukawa's side with a small wave. It was still strange seeing her without a witch hat. "We came to see how you were doing. Since there's no classes today." 

"You don't look good," Harukawa concluded, pushing the door open wider. "Come on, we're going outside." 

Shuichi stepped back with an uneasy smile. Mustering all his self control, he didn’t look over his shoulder to check if Ouma was still there. 

"I appreciate you both coming, but I'm really fine." 

"Is that what you told the medical examiner?" Harukawa rolled her eyes. "You can fool them, but you can't fool us." 

"That's right, you can't fool us," Yumeno chimed in after a beat, as if she weren't completely sure what they hadn’t been fooled about. True to form, she cleared her throat and changed the subject. "Harumaki is coming with me to my aikido lesson today! We were wondering if you wanted to come." 

"Wow, um. That sounds great," Shuichi said, imagining Harukawa flipping Yumeno's instructor flat on her back in an instant. "It's great that you're sticking with the aikido." 

Yumeno glowed. 

"I joined an art class too, if you're more interested in that. It meets on Tuesdays." 

He admired Yumeno, truly. He wasn't sure what his healing equivalent would be—taking up the piano? Developing an interest in rocket science? Thinking about it only made his chest tighten.

Harukawa, sharp as always, seemed to spot some change in his expression that he hadn't noticed himself. She sighed and turned to Yumeno, lowering her voice. 

"Give me a second with Saihara. I'll meet you outside." 

Yumeno glanced between the two of them, momentarily at a loss for words, before pressing her lips together and giving Harukawa a resolute nod. She then turned and jabbed a finger in Shuichi’s direction. 

"We believe in you, Saihara! We always have! Don't forget that!" 

Her dramatic words fizzled out in the drab scenery of his ordinary high school dorm room. It wasn't her fault—she'd been made for a much grander atmosphere than this. This was probably their fate for the rest of their lives: to be reminded daily of their incompatibility with the world around them.

That realization lingered with him longer than the words themselves as he watched Yumeno make her way down the hall.

"Saihara."

Shuichi stood up straight, Harukawa's tone snapping through his spine like a whip crack. Before he could ask what she wanted, she stepped inside, shut the door behind her, and fixed him with a pointed look. 

"What are you doing?" 

"What am I—? Before you got here, I was just sleeping."

"That's not what I meant. I meant, what are you going to do now?" 

She wasn’t referring to his Saturday plans. Shuichi opened his mouth, but no words came. Harukawa wasn't just one of the medical examiners or guidance counselors. She was a friend. He couldn't just make something up. 

"... I don't know. I was hoping I could contribute to the investigation into Project Dangan Ronpa, but..."

"There is no investigation. We figured out the truth and that awful game is over. You need to find something else." 

Even without her touching him, Shuichi could feel himself buckling under each of her words. Shrinking, growing small—even less than ordinary. Certainly not super high school level.

"... That's not fair," he murmured. "Normal teenagers aren't expected to have everything figured out in high school." 

"It's not about normal or abnormal, it's about you being..." She sighed and stamped her foot. These conversations were not her forte either. "You don't have to stick with it forever, you just need to decide on something."

"I know, I know I should be more like Yumeno, but I'm just not ready to—" 

"You don't need to do that. I'm not saying become an astronaut, I'm just saying you need some kind of goal." 

She pursed her lips, looking down and fiddling with the hems of her sleeves as she went on. 

"... It’s not a big deal or anything, but I'm going to do a course in developmental education once we graduate. Apparently you need that to work at a nursery school. My memories of the orphanage might be fake, but I still think it's a good job." 

She puffed out her cheeks and let out a breath. 

"He believed that I could do something better than killing, so I'm going to give it a try." 

"Oh." Shuichi felt the pressure on his chest lighten. A small smile crept onto his face. "That sounds great. I'm sure you'll do great." 

"Yeah, we'll see," Harukawa said, clipping the conversation short. "That's all I wanted to say. Think about it."

She looked him up and down once more.

"If you're not going to aikido, you should still go outside. You look pale." 

Shuichi let out a small laugh. 

"Okay. I'll go outside after I clean up a little." 

"Yeah." Harukawa eyed his unkempt bed, the scattered contents of his desk. "Do that. I'll come again tomorrow." 

She turned on her heel and left him alone in his dorm room, shutting the door with a firm yank. For a few moments, Shuichi simply stood and listened to the ticking of the clock, replaying her words over and over again. 

Harukawa didn't mean to be harsh, he knew that much. This was just her way of showing affection and concern. Even Yumeno went out of her way to try to include him in what she was doing. As for his own plans... 

"Is that what's bothering you? You can’t figure out what to do next?" 

A familiar voice cut through the near-silence. His stomach turning, Saihara looked over his shoulder to see Ouma perched on his bed. 

"Were you there this whole time?" 

"Does it matter? I'm in your head, I'm always listening." Ouma beamed. "But gee, I guess it makes sense that you don't know what to do, since you weren't exactly designed to keep living after the game ended. Besides, you've been borrowing Akamatsu and Momota's motives from the beginning." 

"Don't talk about them like that—" Shuichi started, but Ouma simply let out a bark of laughter. 

"Honestly, how did you even get by so long without basic character motivation? It's pretty funny when you think about it. In making you a detective without a motive, Shirogane made you more than weak. She made you the worst character in Dangan Ronpa." 

"Is that supposed to hurt my feelings? I'm more than the character profile that she laid out for me, we all are." 

"So what are you gonna do about it, huh?" Ouma cocked his head, leering. "Become a model citizen, find a nice stable job? Is that all those deductive reasoning skills are good for in this world?" 

"What exactly are you getting at?" 

Ouma's eyes gleamed as he leaned closer, gripping the edge of the bed.

"I'm just saying you're special, Saihara. Everyone else is willing to leave the game in the past, but not you. Why is that? Maybe it's because you saw something that they didn't, that all those adults are missing." 

The face of the tired investigator flashed in his head. They thought they knew everything about the Dangan Ronpa games but they didn't really know, they weren't there. They'd never know what it was like to be reborn into a world with just fifteen other kids as your only family, and then to lose them one after the other. 

When they were still inside the game, he hadn't even known about the world outside, let alone the fact that there were other games and other players—maybe even other survivors. Survivors like Amami Rantaro. Was he the only one? What happened to people like him? Were they still out there, somewhere in the world? Or maybe there were survivors who had escaped from the game, but never quite managed to find their way back into the world again. 

Now that they were free, he actually had a chance of finding out. He had more information at his fingertips than ever before. 

Shuichi's mind raced through the possibilities. Ouma watched him expectantly, as if waiting for a revelation to emerge, and let out a dramatic sigh when none came.

"Or maybe there’s really nothing, and all the mysteries have been solved,” he said, glancing down at his nails with feigned disinterest. "But if you wanted to know for sure, you could just play the games. Dangan Ronpa. I'm sure there's copies floating around on the web if you can't find them in normal stores anymore." 

"And do what?"

"That's for you to find out, Detective. Unless you really want to leave it in the hands of those half-rate investigators." 

"I'm just a normal high schooler," Shuichi nearly said. Nearly. 

Like Harukawa said, he needed to do something with his life. It didn't have to be forever, he just needed to choose something. 

"Oh? What are you up to now?" 

"Getting my stuff," Shuichi said, pushing past Ouma to collect his phone and wallet from his desk. "Harukawa said to go outside, so I’m going out." 

Ouma grinned.

  


* * *

  


"You're not gonna find a better selection anywhere else in Japan, I'll tell you that much. You know how rare the original games are? You know how hard it is to find a working PZP?"

The pigtailed girl behind the counter prattled on as she scanned each item into her portable register. Her dozens of bracelets jingled as she passed the barcodes beneath the laser scanner: One refurbished game system, three small game discs, fifty interactive DVDs complete with developer's commentary, and one bootleg data disk.

"You must really love Dangan Ronpa, my man." She looked Shuichi in the eye. "It's a good call to get them all on physical media right now. Now that the Project is going into hiding, these suckers are gonna shoot up in price like no one's business. And never trust streaming, that's my advice to you." 

"Yeah, thanks." 

"You look familiar. You one of those Hope's Peak Cosplayers?" 

"No. I don't know what that is. Can I pay in cash?"

The girl eyed him for a moment, craning her neck so Shuichi could see her Monokuma tattoo poking out of her tank top. 

"Yeah, no problem boss. That'll be one shot, no installments." 

 

  


He should have brought a backpack. The paper bags were heavy enough to tear his arms out of their sockets. Ouma strolled alongside him as they exited the alley, swinging his empty hands.

"Which one are we gonna play first? Start from the beginning? Or do we work our way backward so you can watch me die again?" 

Shuichi sighed. The recording of the 53rd Dangan Ronpa killing game sat at the top of the bag, sporting a different jacket because it was a fan-made bootleg, not an official release. Somewhere in that recording was Akamatsu holding his hand in a sunset-lit classroom. Momota taking him out to the courtyard to train for the first time. 

Ouma calmly laying down under an industrial strength press and watching with wide eyes as the metal surface slowly lowered to meet him.

“By now you’ve probably wondered why it’s me that’s here, and not Akamatsu or Momota,” Ouma said, like he was commenting on the weather. “You liked them more than me anyway. But when you heard my voice coming out of that Exisal, a part of you was happy, wasn't it? Even though that would mean that Momota was dead." 

"I suspected from the beginning that you were dead,” Shuichi replied in a low voice, conscious of the passers-by. “I just didn’t want to jump to that conclusion until there was substantial evidence." 

"Because you missed me? I'd been gone for a few days at that point, you must have missed me." Ouma giggled behind his hand. "That's okay, Saihara, I missed you too. You want to know something?" 

"Can you even tell me anything that I don’t already know?" 

Ouma curled his fingers beneath his chin with a catlike smile. 

"As I was being crushed to death, my last thoughts were of you."

Shuichi’s fingers clenched the paper bag handles. His mind supplied images of Ouma's muscles compressing and his bones crunching under the force of the press. Could any human maintain their state of mind in that situation, even someone as twisted as Ouma was? He took a deep breath and loosened his grip. 

"That's an obvious lie." 

"You're right," Ouma chirped. "I was thinking about the mastermind the whole time, but I spared a thought for you. I knew you'd take them down with the trap I set. Because I believed in you."

He’d felt that back then, too. Ouma had trusted him to see the class trial through in his absence. He hadn’t been the first to believe so strongly in him, and as it turned out, he hadn’t been the last. 

Yumeno’s words echoed in his head. Belief in something, even the smallest hope, was what had brought them this far. It didn’t have to be forever, it just had to be something. He just needed to start. Not everyone had that luxury.

Shifting the bags to one struggling arm, he picked up the bootleg copy of New Dangan Ronpa V3 and turned it over to the back cover, skimming through the list of participants’ names. 

    ~~Akamatsu Kaede~~ , ~~Amami Rantaro~~ , ~~Iruma Miu~~ , ~~Ouma Kokichi~~ , ~~Kiibo~~ , ~~Gokuhara Gonta~~ , Saihara Shuichi, ~~Shirogane Tsumugi~~ , ~~Shinguji Korekiyo~~ , ~~Chabashira Tenko~~ , ~~Tojo Kirumi~~ , Harukawa Maki, ~~Hoshi Ryoma~~ , ~~Momota Kaito~~ , Yumeno Himiko, ~~Yonaga Angie~~

He glanced down at the contents of the bags, imagining similar lists duplicated fifty times, maybe more. He slid the disc back into the bag. 

"We'll start reviewing the series from the beginning, with the first game. I can only imagine how long it'll take to finish them all."

"I don't mind," Ouma cackled, folding his arms behind his head. "I love games."

**Author's Note:**

> It always struck me that Saihara is the kind of person who can't really get by on his own. Without Kaede or Kaito, and with his guilt-ridden personality, I tried to imagine how he'd cope in the real world. (Also I love Oumasai and I wanted a way for my ship to survive post-game.)
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
